Gloucester VA Links and News

Sunday, June 23, 2013

Angel Face - Sunday Funnies

From 1957. Angel Face was a short run comic strip, but very comical. Here is one of the plates from that era. Part of our Sunday Funnies each Sunday right here on GVLN.

Spooky - Sunday Comic Book Story

Spooky from Chuck Thompson

Spooky is our pick for this Sunday's comic story. Put some fun and humor into your life with this story from the Golden Age of comics. Catch another story each week right here on GVLN. Free downloads of this story are available on our SlideShare site.

Old Time Radio - Blondie And Dagwood Bumstead

Old Time Radio show, Blondie. Blondie and Dagwood Bumstead. A very popular movie, radio and comic strip comedy gang from the 1930's to modern times as the

Dagwood Bumstead holding a Dagwood sandwich (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

comic strip is still being produced today. In the picture to the left, Dagwood is holding one of his famous ultra stacked sandwich creations. You will have to go towards the bottom of the site on the right hand side and turn off the radio broadcast feed, then come back and play this show. It's about 30 minutes long. Well worth your time to listen to as it is as funny as all getout.

Blimps And Zeppelins - Old Photo Of The Week

Blimps and Zeppelins, once the future of air travel throughout the world, now a fond memory from the past. We see these every now and again either on TV during a major sporting event or actually above head. Most of the time it is the Good Year blimp that is often seen, however, we caught a few pictures here in Gloucester of the DirectTV blimp over the Gloucester Courthouse area a few years ago.

There is talk these days of bringing back air travel via blimps as the gases used in them now is much safer than ever before. It's a cost effective plan as opposed to jet fuel. The issues however, are storage of the giant air machines. The future has some interesting surprises for us all.

Riverdance - The First Show (Michael Flatley,Jean Butler)1995

If you missed this years ago on PBS, here is your chance to see the first show of Riverdance broadcast worldwide. Since then it has become a major production. We will be broadcasting one of the newer versions soon that is just breathtaking. This show is well worth your time. If you are in the least a fan of celtic music, the show here is well worth your time just for the music production alone. Catch a full concert every Sunday right here on GVLN.

English: Irish dancer Michael Flatley (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

ESPN MLB Video Updates for June 23rd, 2013

Major League Baseball updates by ESPN. Catch your sports updates daily right here on GVLN.

THE EPHEMERA: AN EMBLEM OF HUMAN LIFE - Benjamin Franklin

TO MADAME BRILLON, OF PASSY

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

You may remember, my dear friend, that when we lately spent that happy
day in the delightful garden and sweet society of the Moulin Joly, I
stopped a little in one of our walks, and stayed some time behind the
company. We had been shown numberless skeletons of a kind of little fly,
called an ephemera, whose successive generations, we were told, were
bred and expired within the day. I happened to see a living company of
them on a leaf, who appeared to be engaged in conversation. You know I
understand all the inferior animal tongues. My too great application to
the study of them is the best excuse I can give for the little progress
I have made in your charming language. I listened through curiosity to
the discourse of these little creatures; but as they, in their national
vivacity, spoke three or four together, I could make but little of their
conversation. I found, however, by some broken expressions that I heard
now and then, they were disputing warmly on the merit of two foreign
musicians, one a _cousin_, the other a _moscheto_; in which dispute they
spent their time, seemingly as regardless of the shortness of life as if
they had been sure of living a month. Happy people! thought I; you are
certainly under a wise, just, and mild government, since you have no
public grievances to complain of, nor any subject of contention but the
perfections and imperfections of foreign music. I turned my head from
them to an old gray-headed one, who was single on another leaf, and
talking to himself. Being amused with his soliloquy, I put it down in
writing, in hopes it will likewise amuse her to whom I am so much
indebted for the most pleasing of all amusements, her delicious company
and heavenly harmony.

"It was," said he, "the opinion of learned philosophers of our race, who
lived and flourished long before my time, that this vast world, the
Moulin Joly, could not itself subsist more than eighteen hours; and I
think there was some foundation for that opinion, since, by the apparent
motion of the great luminary that gives life to all nature, and which in
my time has evidently declined considerably towards the ocean at the end
of our earth, it must then finish its course, be extinguished in the
waters that surround us, and leave the world in cold and darkness,
necessarily producing universal death and destruction. I have lived
seven of those hours, a great age, being no less than four hundred and
twenty minutes of time. How very few of us continue so long! I have seen
generations born, flourish, and expire. My present friends are the
children and grandchildren of the friends of my youth, who are now,
alas, no more! And I must soon follow them; for, by the course of
nature, though still in health, I cannot expect to live above seven or
eight minutes longer. What now avails all my toil and labor in amassing
honey-dew on this leaf, which I cannot live to enjoy! What the political
struggles I have been engaged in for the good of my compatriot
inhabitants of this bush, or my philosophical studies for the benefit of
our race in general! for in politics what can laws do without morals?
Our present race of ephemeræ will in a course of minutes become
corrupt, like those of other and older bushes, and consequently as
wretched. And in philosophy how small our progress! Alas! art is long,
and life is short! My friends would comfort me with the idea of a name
they say I shall leave behind me; and they tell me I have lived long
enough to nature and to glory. But what will fame be to an ephemera who
no longer exists? And what will become of all history in the eighteenth
hour, when the world itself, even the whole Moulin Joly, shall come to
its end and be buried in universal ruin?"

To me, after all my eager pursuits, no solid pleasures now remain, but
the reflection of a long life spent in meaning well, the sensible
conversation of a few good lady ephemeræ, and now and then a kind smile
and a tune from the ever amiable _Brillante_.